Springs a flower unknown among us,
Springs the white man's foot in blossom."
Between certain birds and plants there exists many curious traditions,
as in the case of the nightingale and the rose. According to a piece of
Persian folklore, whenever the rose is plucked, the nightingale utters a
plaintive cry, because it cannot endure to see the object of its love
injured. In a legend told by the Persian poet Attar, we are told how all
the birds appeared before Solomon, and complained that they were
unable to sleep from the nightly wailings of the nightingale. The bird,
when questioned as to the truth of this statement, replied that his love
for the rose was the cause of his grief. Hence this supposed love of the
nightingale for the rose has been frequently the subject of poetical
allusion. Lord Byron speaks of it in the "Giaour":--
"The rose o'er crag or vale,
Sultana of the nightingale,
The maid for whom his melody,
His thousand songs are heard on high,
Blooms blushing to her lover's tale,
His queen, the garden queen, his rose,
Unbent by winds, unchilled by snows."
Thackeray, too, has given a pleasing rendering of this favourite
legend:--
"Under the boughs I sat and listened still,
I could not have my fill.
'How comes,' I said, 'such music to his bill?
Tell me for whom he sings so beautiful a trill.'
'Once I was dumb,' then did the bird disclose,
'But looked upon the rose,
And in the garden where the loved one grows,
I straightway did begin sweet music to compose.'"
Mrs. Browning, in her "Lay of the Early Rose," alludes to this legend,
and Moore in his "Lalla Rookh" asks:--
"Though rich the spot
With every flower this earth has got,
What is it to the nightingale,
If there his darling rose is not?"